


Cold

by Lucretias_Reflection



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Other, Suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 13:35:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4921570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucretias_Reflection/pseuds/Lucretias_Reflection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>weird pre-Until Dawn events fic. Sort of a poetry ish thing that focuses around Josh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold

**Author's Note:**

> It's 3:00 am and i just wrote this because im dumb and its really short but i wanted to post something. Posting this from my iphone, so apologies if the format is all wonky

He's scratching at the leather of the armrest he sits in, the sound of the nail digging in, grounding and grating against his tongue and his ears. He does it once, twice, four times before the words of the psychiatrist reach him again. When he looks up, it's his father he sees in the face of the doctor who rests his face over his hands. He's seen so many people in that position, with that same glint of their eyes and furrow in their brow when they try to understand why, why he did it, why now, why ever. They want to help because they have to help, not because he wants them to. Not because he didn't wake up, because he did. He woke up in a pale green light with his sister by his side and an iv in his arm after he went into that room, where he went to be alone, alone forever in sleep. In the back of his unconscious mind he still felt the scattered handful of pills in his palm. He woke up and that palm was now filled with another, a soft hand that was warm with fingernails polished and smooth that smelled like vanilla scented anti-bacterial. He went to his bed again some nights later with that same hand clutching his, it's owner refusing to allow him any solitary. He wakes now in that bed but he is not warm, she is not with him and he is cold, cold, cold. His hand is empty and the room is quiet, she does not breathe beside him anymore and he remembers that she is gone. She is gone and he is alone, again. He steps outside knowing she will not be there but he steps forward anyway, and a small itch starts to eat at the back of his mind and he knows he deserves this. She is gone. Still in the night they visit him, whispering things he cannot hear in quick and hushed breaths that strangle him. There is air but he cannot find it, and he suffocates again tonight. He suffocates and his lungs are burning, the more air drawn out of him the louder their voices become, and soon they are crying and begging him to do something he cant understand. His cheeks are streaked and he reaches out and grabs at the night, lying in his bed he reaches for them but they are always farther and do not reach back. "Help," she whispers. "Help us. Josh." "You're not here," he whispers back, but they do not hear him. They cannot hear him. They are gone. 

Today, he leaves the building with a new bottle in a small white bag. These ones are stronger, and their doses are higher. They will stop the ghosts from talking tonight. 

They are gone. They have not visited him for almost six months now. They did not go away right away, but their visits were quieter, shorter, until they disappeared all together. He slides open his phone, and hesitates before pressing record. He needs to see them again. He needs to talk to them again. If he tries to set things right, everything else will fall into place. He taps send, and he feels the crack of a smile as Sam responds gleefully. The pill bottle sits empty on his desk.

They're angry. They came back too quickly, too soon, and now he cannot stop them. Their whispers are now screams, their visits are frequent and he wakes to Hannah's hand in his every hour, but her nails are not smooth and her hand is not soft but it's cold, so cold, and her skin slides off her rotten flesh when she clutches his wrist and jerks him awake in the dark hours of the morning. They will not leave him. They are not real but they are here. He realizes now that they cannot leave him, that they are part of him, and the only place he can make sense of anymore is when it happened. He is shaking as he packs his bags now and he zips them closed. He will stop it. He can stop it. They're out there, he knows it, they have to be, and he will help them, somehow, but even as his fingers brush over his smile he can see Beth's blinded eyes burning through him from her place in his chair across the room. He does not look at her. He never looks at her. But he promises her now, sliding a bottle of sleeping pills into the front pocket, that he will make things right, and he will punish them for what they did. "Who will punish you?" she asks, and her voice is so close to him his neck snaps to the side to catch her, but she is gone. And he is alone, again.


End file.
